Siri acquires “shortcuts”, simple actions which can be launched verbally or with a button press, and chained together to produce mini programs for power users.

Safari’s tracking prevention features have been upgraded: they’ll now lock Facebook out of tracking users through its comment boxes and like buttons, and prevent anyone from “fingerprinting” devices by looking at their configuration details.

From 2019, the Mac will be able to run iOS apps – four of which are launching this autumn, as Apple ports over News, Stocks, Home and Voice Memos.

Tim Cook wraps things up

See you next year, Apple fans. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

And that’s it! Tim Cook comes back on stage to run through the previous updates, and give the standard rubric: updates will be available this autumn, and the developer betas will be available today.

The show ends with a montage of video interviews with loved ones of app developers, including the backstory of Yelp, who are currently fighting Google in nearly every venue going over the latter’s monopoly power. Is that a pointed decision by Apple? Could be.

Are macOS and iOS merging?

“The fact that the Mac and iOS share so much technology has led people every year to ask us the question: are you merging macOS and iOS” Federighi asks, before offering a one-word answer: “No”.

But, he notes, Mac users not only run Mac apps, but also web apps, and games – built on cross-platform tech. Why not also let them run iOS apps?

In developer terms, this means that UIKit, the tools used to build iOS apps, will shortly be getting a Mac version. As I guessed below, News, Home, Stocks and Voice Memos are the test versions of that.

Developers will get those tools in 2019, Federighi says. (There’s a notable lack of applause from a typically very cheery audience to this particular news. I’m not sure developers really wanted this feature.)

‘No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no no App Limits’ Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The changes that came to the iOS app store are making their way to the Mac App store next, which is getting editorial content, autoplaying videos, and recommendations.

More importantly, Apple has won round some big App Store holdouts, including Microsoft, Adobe, Panic and BBEdit.

It will be interesting to see whether these companies are coming purely because of the promise of fancier graphic design, or if Apple has also changed its business model to solve some of their issues. An inability to offer paid updates, the 30% cut Apple takes, and the limitations of the Mac App Store security features have all driven away developers historically.

Apple is turning off Facebook’s ability to track users

A big one: Apple is turning off Facebook’s ability to track users across the web through like buttons and comment feeds. Federighi doesn’t cite the social network by name, but reassures users that iOS’s intelligent tracking protection will now cover that content as well. If this is enabled by default, it could have a wide-ranging effect on the company’s ability to track its users.

And the tracking protection is also making it harder for data companies “to uniquely identify your device and track you”, limiting the information about things like fonts and system configuration that third parties can find.

Next up, Apple News, Stocks, Home and Voice Memos are launching on the Mac. There isn’t really much to say, here: it’s Apple News, Stocks, Home and Voice Memos, but on the Mac. This does suggest, though, that rumours of a crossover between iOS and macOS may be true – these apps do look very similar to the iPad versions. We’ll see.

OK, so, dark mode wasn’t really the flagship feature. Next up is “desktop stacks”, which attempts to save people who keep all their files on the desktop from themselves: the hundreds of files you store there will now be simply and easily grouped by type.

The Finder itself also gets a slight rehaul. A gallery view replaces the old coverflow, letting you cycle through (and lightly edit) files in the document manager itself.

(As Federighi demonstrates a new screenshot tool, there’s also a glimpse of the new Safari which features real icons again, something users – well, me – have been calling for for a while.)

Continuity, Apple’s name for the mac/iOS crossover features, gets a focus: Mac apps can now call directly to the camera on the phone, letting users take a picture automatically from apps such as Keynote.

Mojave

Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Finally, the Mac. First off, the name. With Apple having followed a California location naming theme since it ran out of cats, the company’s gone from the mountains to the desert: macOS 10.14 is called Mojave.

The flagship consumer feature, Federighi demonstrates, is a dark mode. It makes your Mac dark. It looks good! It even changes the default desktop background from a daytime shot of the desert to a night-time one.

AppleTV

Watch down, AppleTV next – looks like macOS is being saved for last, which suggest that something macOS-related might be dropped as a trademark “One More Thing”. Not much to report, though; most of the work on Apple TV still seems to be behind-the-scenes, as Apple hammers out content deals:

New watch features

On to connectivity – a function of the Apple Watch that the company has downplayed in recent years, in favour of focusing more on the health and fitness tracking.

The leading feature here is a walkie-talkie mode, letting users talk back and forth using the watch like, well, a walkie-talkie. It looks quite fun, and potentially – for a device which is still very weird to use as a real phone – actually more useful than the calling feature.

Beyond that, a grab-bag of new features:

Apple’s improved the Siri watch face, a promising feature which launched last year but failed to live up to its lofty aims of offering only the necessary information on your watch. Siri shortcuts will now show up there, and so will information from third-party apps.

If you lift your watch to speak into it, you no longer need to say Hey Siri to start Siri.

Apple Watch apps can now push interactive notifications, letting you do things like rate a carshare driver, or alter a restaurant booking.

The Apple Watch can now display web views – not to browse the net, but so that you can at least scan links texted to you.

The Apple Podcast app is launching on the Apple Watch.

Notably, the Apple Watch still hasn’t received a few updates that developers and users have been begging for, including the ability to stream audio from third-party apps like Spotify or Overcast.
Scratch that – Lynch arrives back after a brief demo to confirm that third-party apps will now be able to play background audio, which should be a big driver of Apple Watch use amongst the Spotify set.

Animoji

Animoji is getting a new “tongue detection” ability, as though the creepiest feature from iOS 11 needed to get creepier. You can also personalise your own “memoji”. Animoji unsettle me on a visceral level. I think I’m in the minority here, though.

You can also add iMessage stickers on to the camera app, and turn your head into an Animoji superimposed on to reality. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it.

Time Well Spent

Federighi back, and he’s turned to the “Time Well Spent” movement. “We might not recognise just how distracted we’ve become,” he says, in a not-so-subtle dig at social networks like Facebook and Twitter. So, three updates to help that.

Firstly, Do Not Disturb During Bedtime will now deliberately not show you notifications if you open your phone at night, allowing you to check the time and get back to sleep without worrying. Do Not Disturb will also allow you to activate it on a timer, or leave it on until you leave an area.

Secondly, the company is overhauling notifications, lifting one of Android’s best features, grouped notifications, letting those 47 WhatsApp updates get bundled together into one entry.

And the new OS also lets you change your notification settings directly from the lock screen, from disabling noises to turning off notifications altogether. Siri will also suggest that you may want to disable some notifications if you don’t click on them for a while.

Finally, a new Screen Time app offers you monitoring and insight on how much time you’re spending on your phone, and where you’re spending it – even down to how often you’re picking up your phone, and which apps are sending you the most notifications. You can also set app limits, voluntarily curtailing your time on the most habit-forming apps (a feature demonstrated through Instagram).

That app will also be usable as a parental control toolbox, since parents can control their kids’ screen time in just the same way that adults can control their own.

And say what you like about Craig, he has a way with words. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Siri Shortcuts

Siri’s turn in the spotlight. Apps will now be able to make “Shortcuts” for the voice assistant: add a shortcut to Siri, and you can record your own trigger phrase, which will then be able to activate at a word from you.

Siri’s personal assistant functionality is also getting a boost: apps that you use regularly will be able to push suggested actions to your lock screen. Order the same coffee every day? Eventually that shortcut will just appear on your homescreen.